Comparison
Argus and AdsPower, side by side
A sourced, dated comparison of Argus and AdsPower: platforms, APIs, automation, MCP, captcha and team roles, each row read from AdsPower's own documentation.
Comparison pages are usually written by whoever wants to win them, so here is how this one is built. Every AdsPower row below was read from their own site and documentation on 17 August 2026, and each cell links to the page it came from. Anything we could not find on their site is left out rather than guessed at — a blank row here means we did not verify it, never that the feature is missing. And the rows Argus loses are in the table with the rest of them.
Before the table
Which of these is for you
AdsPower runs on Linux as well as Windows and macOS, ships a library of ready-made RPA templates aimed at the big platforms, and documents an MCP server of its own. If your machines run Ubuntu, that settles it before any other row does — Argus has no Linux build at all.
Argus is for people who want the runner, the tables it fills and the assistant that drives both to be one workspace rather than three products, and who are on Apple Silicon or Windows. The free tier is 5 profiles rather than two, and reCAPTCHA is solved on your own CPU rather than handed to a service that bills per solve.
The sourced table
Argus and AdsPower, row by row
Cells are sentences rather than ticks. Two ticks in a captcha row would hide the thing that decides it — whether every solve costs money — and the same is true of half the rows below.
| Capability | Argus | AdsPower |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes — 5 profiles, 2 automations, no card | 2 profiles, described on the pricing page as free foreverSource |
| Desktop builds | macOS on Apple Silicon and Windows 10/11 x64. No Linux, no Intel Mac, no mobile | Windows 10 and later, macOS 11 (Big Sur) and later, and Linux (Ubuntu Desktop 22.04) and later. No iOS or Android appSource |
| Local API | Yes — 89 endpoints on http://127.0.0.1:39219, with scoped keys and an approve-or-deny prompt for every new client | Yes — documented on http://local.adspower.net:50325/ or http://localhost:50325/, with API permission granted to paid plansSource |
| No-code automation | Yes — 24 step types, with schedules and datasets, on every plan including free | RPA, a template-driven builder — “No complex coding, easily create exclusive processes”, and “It’s free for now”Source |
| AI assistant | Yes — an assistant with 18 skills, running on AI provider keys you bring; Argus sells no tokens or credits | OpenAI models (GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, DALL·E 3) can be called from a step inside an RPA flow, using an API key you supplySource |
| Captcha solving | Built in: “Solves reCAPTCHA in the browser itself, on CPU. No account, no per-solve fee.” | Through third-party services such as 2Captcha, which you register with and supply an API key forSource |
| Team seats | Up to 10 seats on Team and 25 on Enterprise, sharing one pool. No per-resource permission model yet | Administrator, Manager and Employee roles, with access set per profile group; the owner alone on a team with no membersSource |
| Cookie export format | Imports cookie files in JSON — a bare array, or an object with a cookies key — or in Netscape format, a whole folder at a time, matched to profiles by name | “JSON and Netscape are both supported formats for AdsPower”Source |
| Proxy management | Shared library with health checks for egress IP, country, latency and datacenter exits; a failed check blocks the launch. Argus sells no proxies | A proxy list with bulk checking. AdsPower states it “neither provides proxies nor has any proxies built in”Source |
| MCP (agent tools) | Yes — 90 MCP tools, so an agent drives profiles directly | Yes — an MCP server documented for Claude Desktop and other MCP-compatible clients, needing Node.js 18 or laterSource |
| Crypto payment | Yes — card through Revolut or crypto through OxaPay | Card and PayPal, and cryptocurrency by single-use invoiceSource |
Every AdsPower row above was read from AdsPower's own documentation on 17 August 2026; the Argus rows come from our own reference. These products change often, and we would rather correct this page than defend it — tell us if something here is out of date. Anything we could not verify on their site is left out of the table rather than guessed at.
What actually differs
Both ship MCP. What the agent can reach is the difference
AdsPower documents an MCP server for Claude Desktop and other clients, so this is not a row where one product has agent support and the other does not. What differs is the surface behind it. Argus exposes 89 local endpoints and 90 MCP tools that reach profiles, proxies, cookie sets, automations, schedules, datasets, connectors and skills — the same surface the app itself drives — and every new client raises an approve-or-deny prompt in the app before its first request, with keys you can scope to named folders and revoke. The question worth asking of either product is not whether an agent can connect, but what it is allowed to touch once it has.
What actually differs
Captcha: one of these bills per solve
AdsPower documents captcha handling through third-party services such as 2Captcha, which you register with and supply an API key for — the solving happens on their servers and is priced per solve. Argus ships a plugin that solves reCAPTCHA in the browser itself, on CPU, with no account and no per-solve fee; it is off until you enable it, because the model is a one-time download of about 56 MB shared by every profile on that machine. At a hundred solves a day the difference is a line item; at ten it is nothing. Which of those you are decides whether this row matters.
What actually differs
A price you can read before you sign up
This one is a statement about the pricing page rather than the product: AdsPower's plan amounts are rendered in the browser and selected by detected region and currency, so the page's text carries no figures and we cannot quote one here that would still be true where you are. The free tier is stated — two profiles — and team members are documented as a paid add-on. Argus publishes four flat USD prices that do not move with your IP address, and the cheapest paid one is $89 for 30 days, which is more than several products in this category charge to start.
The honest part
Where Argus is the wrong answer
Four things about Argus that a table makes it easy to skim past. If any of them is load-bearing for you, buy the other one — a refund and a bad review cost us more than the sale was worth.
- The desktop builds are macOS on Apple Silicon and Windows 10/11 on x64. There is no Linux build, no Intel Mac build and no mobile app.
- Everything runs on your machine. There is no hosted API and no cloud runner, so nothing happens while the app is closed — a schedule entry whose slot passed with the launcher shut is marked missed and skipped, never caught up.
- The cheapest paid plan is $89 for 30 days. Several products in this category start lower.
- Teams share one pool with no per-resource permissions and no activity log yet — both are named as missing on the teamwork page rather than implied.
The rest of what Argus does not do yet is written down on the teamwork page and in what an anti-detect browser cannot do.
Moving over
What actually transfers, and what does not
Profiles do not move between these tools the way files move between folders. There is no shared format, and the part that matters most — a profile's cookies and its fingerprint together — is the part that travels worst. What genuinely carries over, what has to be rebuilt, and the order to do it in are on the switching page, written without pretending an importer exists that does not.
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